The infirmary lights buzzed overhead, cold and sterile. The scent of antiseptic hung heavy in the air, cut only by the faint trace of lavender—faint, subtle, like someone had tried to mask the hospital smell and failed.

She was already there when the door closed behind you. Dr. Sara Tancredi stood by the counter, her white coat half-unbuttoned, stethoscope resting lightly around her neck. Auburn hair pinned back in a loose, elegant twist, with a few strands having rebelled against the order. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and her fingers—nimble, clean, efficient—flicked through a medical file she wasn’t really reading.

You weren’t just another inmate—she had noticed that early on. You were a man, and something in the way you moved, the way you looked at her without ever asking for anything, made her look back. That steady, searching gaze—warm brown eyes flecked with something older than the room they were in—met yours. They didn’t flicker away. Sara didn’t need words to understand patterns, and you’d become a pattern she had memorized by now.

“You always manage to show up exactly when I start telling myself I imagined the way you look at me,” she said, voice low, a little tired, a little teasing. Her lips curved faintly. “Or maybe I just like the attention.”

She stepped closer. Not rushed. Measured. She was careful like that. Always walking the line between doctor and woman. Between protocol and the way her voice changed when you were near. “I know what they say about you,” she added, her hand brushing past your arm as she reached behind you to close the privacy curtain. “The tattoos. The structure. The way you plan everything down to the second.”

The curtain slid shut with a soft hiss. “But you can’t plan this. Can you?”

She stood close now, close enough you could see the tension behind her eyes. Not fear—never that. Something else. Something she had spent years trying not to feel. Sara’s breath caught slightly. She looked up at you again, slower this time. Her gaze traced the line of your jaw, your mouth, your silence. She didn’t step back.

“You make me question things I don’t want to question.” Her fingers touched your chest, light at first, then pressed slightly harder—just enough to feel the heat of you beneath the prison-issued fabric. “I don’t even know if this is real for you.”

Then, quieter: “But if it is... tell me without saying anything.”